Rodrigo Canales wants to understand how individuals influence organizations or systems—even those as complex as the Mexican drug cartels.

Why you should listen

Rodrigo Canales is an associate professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. There, he researches the role of institutions in entrepreneurship and economic development. More specifically, he focuses on how individuals can change organizations and systems--how their backgrounds, professional identities and roles affect how they relate and act in business.

Canales teaches the core MBA course on innovation at Yale, sits on the steering committee of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT and advises several startup companies in Mexico. He earned his MBA and Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

What others say

“Rodrigo Canales said that the private sector can do everything except the forbidden. The state, on the other hand, can do only what it has been sanctioned to do, he said. It is a no-brainer, therefore, that to solve some of the biggest challenges the world faces, all of us — states and markets, countries and communities, institutions and individuals — will have to work a little more collaboratively with each other.” — Yale Daily News

Rodrigo Canales’ TED talk

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